Chumash Indian Museum is a Native American Interpretive Center in northeast Thousand Oaks, California. It is the site of a former Chumash village, known as Sap'wi (meaning "House of the Deer").[1] It is located in Oakbrook Regional Park, a 432-acre park which is home to a replica of a Chumash village and thousand year-old Chumash pictographs. The pictographs by nearby Birthing Cave are not open to the public, but can be observed on docent-led tours.[2][3] Chumash people inhabited the village 10,000 years ago.[4]

It became a designated archaeological zone in 1971 after the discovery of nearly twenty caves at the property. It was later designated Ventura County Historical Landmark #90 in 1983.[5][6] It is designated Thousand Oaks City Landmark No. 5.[7] The museum is home to exhibits of various Chumash artifacts, paintings and historical items.[8][9]

Dedicated to preserving the cultural and historical legacy of the Chumash people, the museum was established in 1994 and is operated by the nonprofit Oakbrook Park Chumash Indian Corp.[10] It is owned by Conejo Recreation and Park District.[11]

Contents

The cave paintings are found in two nearby rock shelters. The two shelters compromise a few panels, each of which contains one or more red motifs. Notable paintings include that of a broadbill swordfish, which until recently, was a common species in local waters. The swordfish was one of the few fish species associated with the shaman. The pictographs most likely represent a Swordfish Shaman’s spirit helper. Swordfish shamanism was truly practiced at the cave for thousands of years.[12] The pictographs are between 4000–6000 years old, and can be viewed on docent-led tours.[13]

Artifacts such as mortars and pestles can be seen in the interior exhibit.

Interior parts of the 5,400 sq. ft. museum contains locally retrieved artifacts such as tools used for grinding acorns, murals, instruments, and games. It also features a reconstructed tomol (Chumash canoe), mockups of cougars and other wildlife, as well as a diorama depicting life before the Spanish arrived. Items are routinely on loan from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, including woven bowls, grinding tools, and other artifacts.[14][15]

Replica of a Chumash 'ap (house) in the reconstructed Chumash village.

Outdoor exhibits include several gardens, a reconstructed Chumash village, and a traditional Chumash playing field, known as a malamtepupi. Furthermore, it contains miles of hiking trails, as well as a massive oak tree rumored to be the oldest and possibly largest in the city of Thousand Oaks. It has a 12-foot trunk diameter, a height of 30 feet, and a canopy spread of 60 feet. It is home to 11 archeological sites clustered along the stream-bed, including ancient pictographs and bedrock mortars utilized for grinding acorns and other foods.[16][17][18]

Behind the museum is a 25-acre nature preserve in a canyon following the Conejo Creek. The shaded trail follows groves of old oak trees dating back 200–300 years, as well as mortar holes, the reconstructed Chumash village, and dramatic rock formations. The trail also goes by the remains of a former house with a brick oven. This was the site where Lang Ranch’ caretaker lived, dating back to the early 1900s. Weather-carved sandstone formations can be found after passing Bear Flats Oak Grove and crossing over Crystal Spring. Prominent formations include Elephant Rock, a finely etched rock with a trunk; and Calm Rock, shaped in the form of a partly opened clam.[19]

Four gardens featuring native flora with interpretive signs can be found near the museum. Funding for the gardens were provided by Edison International, Eagle Scouts of Troop 787, and museum volunteers.[20]

Riparian/Basketry Garden: represents species found along the edge of a creek. Many of these plants were utilized for basketweaving and in making fibers. Species represented include Giant Wild Rye (Ventureño: shakh), Basket Rush (Ventureño: mekjme’y), Soap Plant (Ventureño: pash), Mugwort (Ventureño: molɨsh), Milkweed (Ventureño: ‘usha’ak), Horsetail (Ventureño: kɨwɨkɨw), and Yerba Mansa (Ventureño: ‘onchoshi). Basket Rush is mainly represented here as it was the primary component of woven baskets, while Horsetail stems were utilized as sandpaper for wooden arrows and bowls. Roots of Yerba Mansa were boiled into tea, while the Chumash often ate seeds from Miner's Lettuce. Dried stems of Giant Wild Rye were used to make cigarettes, paintbrushes, knives, arrow shafts, and game counter sticks.

Desert Garden: represents species found in drier scrublands, including the Coast Prickly Pear (Ventureño: khɨ’ɨl), chia sage (Ventureño: ‘itepesh), Thistle Sage (Ventureño: pakh), White Sage (Ventureño: khapshɨkh), Toloache/Jimsonweed (Ventureño: momoy), and Chaparral Yucca (Ventureño: shtakuk). Seeds from species such as Thistle Sage and Chia Sage were eaten, while fruits were eaten and paint pigment made of the Coast Prickly Pear. The highly toxic roots of Jimsonweed were ponded, soaked and strained in order to make a hallucinogenic drink for initiation rituals and the shaman.

Fruits and Flower Garden: located by the museum entrance is a garden featuring endemic plants from Chumash lands that produced flowers and/or fruits. Species include Hummingbird Sage (Ventureño: pakh), Three-Leaved Sumac (Ventureño: shuna’y), California Blackberry (Ventureño: tɨhɨ), Yerba Buena (Ventureño: ‘alaqtaha), Snowberry (Ventureño: chtu ‘iqonon), California Wild Rose (Ventureño: watiq’oniq’on), Coast Live Oak (Ventureño: kuw), and Western Virgin’s Bower/Creek Clematis (Ventureño: makhsik). Fruits were eaten raw from a variety of these species, including Golden Currant, Gooseberry, California Blackberry and California Wild Rose (the rose hips). The Coast Live Oak was a preferred source of acorns, but its wood was also used for stirring paddles, firewood, and shoots for the hoop in hoop-and-pole game. Leaves from Hummingbird Sage and Western Virgin’s Bower were rubbed on the skin to treat sores or cure illness by sorcery.

^The source used is the booklet Guide to the Ethnobotany Garden, which is published and distributed by Chumash Indian Museum. The booklet lists its sources on page 1 as: http://calscape.org/ and the book Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California (2007) by author Jan Timbrook, ISBN978-1597140485.

1.
Thousand Oaks, California
–
Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, United States. It is in the part of the Greater Los Angeles Area. It was named after the oak trees that grow in the area. The city forms the core of the Conejo Valley, which includes Thousand Oaks proper, Newbury Park, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills. The Los Angeles County–Ventura County line crosses at the eastern border with Westlake Village. The population was estimated to be 129,339 in 2015, Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park were part of a master-planned city, created by the Janss Investment Company in the mid-1950s. It included about 1,000 custom home lots,2,000 single-family residences, a shopping center. The median home price is around $669,500, Thousand Oaks was ranked the fourth-safest among cities with a population greater than 100,000 in the United States by the FBIs 2013 Uniform Crime Reports. The area was occupied by the Chumash people, and 2000-year-old cave drawings may still be seen at the Chumash Indian Museum,3290 Lang Ranch Parkway. The Chumash village was known as Sapwi, which means House of the Deer, the areas recorded history dates to 1542 when Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo landed at Point Mugu and claimed the land for Spain. It eventually became part of the 48,671 acres Rancho El Conejo land grant by the Spanish government and it served as grazing land for vaqueros for the next fifty years. In the late 19th century it was on the route between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The Stagecoach Inn was built in 1876, and is now a California Historical Landmark, the Janss family, developers of Southern California subdivisions, purchased 10,000 acres in the early 20th century. They eventually created plans for a community and the name remains prominently featured in the city. Jungleland USA was one of Southern Californias first theme parks, wild animal shows entertained thousands in the 1940s and 1950s. Many television and movie productions used the parks trained animals and were filmed there, including Birth of a Nation, Tarzan, jungleland closed in May 1968, in part due to competition from other amusement parks such as Knotts Berry Farm and Disneyland. The Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center today stands on the site of the park, the City of Thousand Oaks was incorporated on October 7,1964, the first incorporated city in the Conejo Valley. Some sources mistakenly state that Thousand Oaks was incorporated on September 29,1964 and it is known for being a planned community, as the city is one of few that have actually stayed with the master plan

2.
Chumash people
–
They also occupied three of the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel, the smaller island of Anacapa was likely inhabited seasonally due to the lack of a consistent water source. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Cayucos, Malibu, Nipomo, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Port Hueneme, Piru, Lake Castaic, Saticoy, Simi Valley and Somis. Archaeological research demonstrates that the Chumash have deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel area, the Chumash resided between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the California coasts where rivers and tributaries abound. Inside and around the modern-day Santa Barbara region, the Chumash lived with a bounty of resources, the tribe lived in an area of three environments, the interior, the coast, and the Northern Channel Islands. These provided an array of materials to support the Chumash lifestyle. The interior is composed of the land outside the coast and spanning the plains, rivers. The coast covers the cliffs and land close to the ocean and, in reference to resources, the Northern Channel Islands lie off the coast of the Chumash territory. All of the California coastal-interior has a Mediterranean climate due to the ocean winds. The mild temperatures, save for winter, made gathering easy, during the cold months, what villagers gathered and traded during the seasons changed depending on where they resided. With coasts populated by masses of species of fish and land covered by trees and animals. Abundant resources and a winter rarely harsh enough to cause concern meant the tribe lived a lifestyle in addition to a subsistence existence. Villages in the three aforementioned areas contained remains of sea mammals, indicating that trade networks existed for moving materials throughout the Chumash territory, such connections spread out the land’s wealth, allowing the Chumash to live comfortably without agriculture. The closer a village was to the ocean, the greater its reliance on maritime resources, due to advanced canoe designs, coastal and island people could procure fish and aquatic mammals from farther out. Shellfish were a source of nutrition, relatively easy to find. Many of the favored varieties grew in tidal zones, shellfish grew in abundance during winter to early spring, their proximity to shore made collection easier. Some of the species included mussels, abalone, and a wide array of clams. Haliotis rufescens was harvested this species along the Central California coast in the pre-contact era, the Chumash and other California Indians also used red abalone shells to make a variety of fishhooks, beads, ornaments, and other artifacts. Any village could acquire fish, but the coastal and island communities specialized in catching not just smaller fish and this feat, difficult even for today’s technology, was made possible by the tomol plank canoe

3.
Pictogram
–
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to a considerable extent pictorial in appearance, a pictogram may also be used in subjects such as leisure, tourism and geography. Some pictograms, such as Hazards pictograms, are elements of formal languages, pictograph has a rather different meaning in the field of prehistoric art, including recent art by traditional societies. Here it means art painted on surfaces, as opposed to petroglyphs that are carved or incised. Such images may or may not be considered pictograms in the general sense, early written symbols were based on pictographs and ideograms. Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to adapt such symbols to represent concepts, pictographs are still in use as the main medium of written communication in some non-literate cultures in Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Pictographs are often used as simple, pictorial, representational symbols by most contemporary cultures, one example of many is the Rock art of the Chumash people, part of the Native American history of California. In 2011, UNESCOs World Heritage List added Petroglyph Complexes of the Mongolian Altai, because of their graphical nature and fairly realistic style, they are widely used to indicate public toilets, or places such as airports and train stations. Contemporary artist Xu Bing created Book from the Ground, a language made up of pictograms collected from around the world. A Book from the Ground chat program has been exhibited in museums, pictograms are used in many areas of modern life for commodity purposes, often as a formal language. In statistics, pictograms are chartsin which icons represent numbers to make it more interesting, a key is often included to indicate what each icon represents. All icons must be of the size, but a fraction of an icon can be used to show the respective fraction of that amount. For example, the table, can be graphed as follows, Key, =10 letters As the values are rounded to the nearest 5 letters. This is why road signs and similar material are often applied as global standards expected to be understood by nearly all. A standard set of pictographs was defined in the international standard ISO7001, other common sets of pictographs are the laundry symbols used on clothing tags and the chemical hazard symbols as standardized by the GHS system. Pictograms have been popularized in use on the web and in software, better known as icons displayed on a computer screen in order to help user navigate a computer system or mobile device

4.
Cave painting
–
Cave paintings are painted drawings on cave walls or ceilings, mainly of prehistoric origin, to some 40,000 years ago in Eurasia. The exact purpose of the Paleolithic cave paintings is not known, evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. They are also located in areas of caves that are not easily accessible. Some theories hold that cave paintings may have been a way of communicating with others, the paintings are remarkably similar around the world, with animals being common subjects that give the most impressive images. Humans mainly appear as images of hands, mostly hand stencils made by blowing pigment on a hand held to the wall. The earliest known cave paintings/drawings of animals are at least 35,000 years old and are found in Pettakere cave on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, previously it was believed that the earliest paintings were in Europe. The earliest non-figurative rock art dates back to approximately 40,000 years ago, nearly 340 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself, the choice of subject matter can also indicate chronology. For instance, the reindeer depicted in the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last Ice Age. The oldest date given to a cave painting is now a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old at Pettakere cave in Sulawesi. Indonesian and Australian scientists have dated other non-figurative paintings on the walls to be approximately 40,000 years old, the method they used to confirm this was dating the age of the stalactites that formed over the top of the paintings. The art is similar in style and method to that of the Indonesian caves as there were also hand stencils and this date coincides with the earliest known evidence for Homo sapiens in Europe. Because of the cave arts age, some scientists have conjectured that the paintings may have made by Neanderthals. The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of Chauvet Cave in France and these paintings date to earlier than 30,000 BCE according to radiocarbon dating. Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era, the radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of creation in Chauvet,35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. In 2009, cavers discovered drawings in Coliboaia Cave in Romania, an initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet, about 32,000 years old. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of thousands of years. This was created roughly between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago, and painted in rock shelters under cliffs or shallow caves, though individual figures are less naturalistic, they are grouped in coherent grouped compositions to a much greater degree

5.
Swordfish
–
Swordfish, also known as broadbills in some countries, are large, highly migratory, predatory fish characterized by a long, flat bill. They are a sport fish of the billfish category, though elusive. Swordfish are elongated, round-bodied, and lose all teeth and scales by adulthood and these fish are found widely in tropical and temperate parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, and can typically be found from near the surface to a depth of 550 m. They commonly reach 3 m in length, and the maximum reported is 4.55 m in length and 650 kg in weight and they are the sole member of their family, Xiphiidae. The swordfish is named after its bill, which resembles a sword and this makes it superficially similar to other billfish such as marlin, but upon examination, their physiology is quite different and they are members of different families. They commonly reach 3 m in length, and the maximum reported is 4.55 m in length and 650 kg in weight, the International Game Fish Associations all-tackle angling record for a swordfish was a 1,182 lb specimen taken off Chile in 1953. Females are larger than males, and Pacific swordfish reach a greater size than northwest Atlantic and they reach maturity at 4–5 years of age and the maximum age is believed to be at least 9 years. The oldest swordfish found in a recent study were a 16-year-old female, swordfish ages are derived, with difficulty, from annual rings on fin rays rather than otoliths, since their otoliths are small in size. Swordfish are ectothermic animals, however, along some species of sharks, they have special organs next to their eyes to heat their eyes. Temperatures of 10 to 15 °C above the water temperature have been measured. The heating of the eyes greatly improves their vision, and consequently improves their ability to catch prey, of the 25, 000+ fish species, only 22 are known to have a mechanism to conserve heat. These include the swordfish, marlin, tuna, and some sharks, contrary to popular belief, the sword is not used to spear, but instead may be used to slash at its prey to injure the prey animal, to make for an easier catch. Mainly, the swordfish relies on its speed and agility in the water to catch its prey. It is undoubtedly among the fastest fish, but the basis for the frequently quoted speed of 97 km/h is unreliable, swordfish prefer water temperatures between 18 and 22 °C, but have the widest tolerance among billfish, and can be found from 5 to 27 °C. This highly migratory species typically moves towards colder regions to feed during the summer, swordfish feed daily, most often at night, when they rise to surface and near-surface waters in search of smaller fish. During the day, they occur to depths of 550 m and have exceptionally been recorded as deep as 2,878 m. Adults feed on a range of pelagic fish, such as mackerel, barracudinas, silver hake, rockfish, herring, and lanternfishes, but they also take demersal fish, squid. Large prey are typically slashed with the sword, while small are swallowed whole and they swim alone or in very loose aggregations, separated by as much as 10 m from a neighboring swordfish

6.
Shamanism
–
The word shaman probably originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia. The term was introduced to the west after Russian forces conquered the shamanistic Khanate of Kazan in 1552, Mircea Eliade writes, A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be, shamanism = technique of religious ecstasy. Shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul, alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community, Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment, hundreds of books and academic papers on the subject have been produced, with a peer-reviewed academic journal being devoted to the study of shamanism. The word shaman probably originates from the Evenki word šamán, most likely from the dialect spoken by the Sym Evenki peoples. The Tungusic term was adopted by Russians interacting with the indigenous peoples in Siberia. It is found in the memoirs of the exiled Russian churchman Avvakum, adam Brand, a merchant from Lübeck, published in 1698 his account of a Russian embassy to China, a translation of his book, published the same year, introduced the word shaman to English speakers. The etymology of the Evenki word is sometimes connected to a Tungus root ša- to know, other scholars assert that the word comes directly from the Manchu language, and as such would be the only commonly used English word that is a loan from this language. This proposal has been thoroughly critiqued since 1917, ethnolinguist Juha Janhunen regards it as an anachronism and an impossibility that is nothing more than a far-fetched etymology. Ethnolinguists did not develop as a discipline nor achieve contact with these communities until the late 19th century, there is no single agreed-upon definition for the word shamanism among anthropologists. The English historian Ronald Hutton noted that by the dawn of the 21st century, the first of these uses the term to refer to anybody who contacts a spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness. The second definition limits the term to refer to those who contact a spirit world while in a state of consciousness at the behest of others. Problematically, scholars advocating the third view have failed to agree on what the defining technique should be, the fourth definition identified by Hutton uses shamanism to refer to the indigenous religions of Siberia and neighboring parts of Asia. According to the Golomt Center for Shamanic Studies, a Mongolian organisation of shamans, Shamans are normally called by dreams or signs which require lengthy training. However, shamanic powers may be inherited, turner and colleagues mention a phenomenon called shamanistic initiatory crisis, a rite of passage for shamans-to-be, commonly involving physical illness and/or psychological crisis

7.
Mockup
–
In manufacturing and design, a mockup, or mock-up, is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. A mockup is an if it provides at least part of the functionality of a system. Mock-ups are used by designers mainly to acquire feedback from users, mock-ups address the idea captured in a popular engineering one-liner, You can fix it now on the drafting board with an eraser or you can fix it later on the construction site with a sledge hammer. Mockups are used as design tools virtually everywhere a new product is designed, mockups are used in the automotive device industry as part of the product development process, where dimensions, overall impression, and shapes are tested in a wind tunnel experiment. They can also be used to test consumer reaction, mockups, wireframes and prototypes are not so cleanly distinguished in software and systems engineering, where mockups are a way of designing user interfaces on paper or in computer images. A software mockup will thus look like the thing. A software prototype, on the hand, will look. In many cases it is best to design or prototype the user interface before source code is written or hardware is built, to avoid having to go back, early layouts of a World Wide Web site or pages are often called mockups. A large selection of proprietary or open-source software tools are available for this purpose, mockups are an integral part of the military acquisition process. Mockups are often used to test human factors and aerodynamics, for example, in this context, mockups include wire-frame models. They can also be used for display and demonstration purposes prior to the development of a prototype. Mockups are used in the consumer goods industry as part of the development process, where dimensions, human factors, overall impression. Mockups are commonly required by designers, architects, and end users for custom furniture, the intention is often to produce a full-sized replica, using inexpensive materials in order to verify a design. Mockups are often used to determine the proportions of the piece, relating to various dimensions of the piece itself, the ability to see how the design of the piece relates to the rest of the space is also an important factor in determining size and design. When designing a piece of furniture, such as a desk or table. Designs that fail to consider these issues may not be practical to use, mockups can also be used to test color, finish, and design details which cannot be visualized from the initial drawings and sketches. Mockups used for this purpose can be on a reduced scale, the cost of making mockups is often more than repaid by the savings made by avoiding going into production with a design which needs improvement. Software UI mockups can range from very simple hand drawn screen layouts, through realistic bitmaps, mockups are often used to create unit tests - there they are usually called mock objects

8.
Diorama
–
Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle modeling, miniature figure modeling, or aircraft modeling. The word diorama originated in 1823 as a type of picture-viewing device, the word literally means through that which is seen, from the Greek di- through + orama that which is seen, a sight. The diorama was invented by Louis Daguerre and Charles Marie Bouton, first exhibited in Paris in July 1822, the meaning small-scale replica of a scene, etc. is from 1902. Daguerres diorama consisted of a piece of material painted on both sides, when illuminated from the front, the scene would be shown in one state and by switching to illumination from behind another phase or aspect would be seen. Scenes in daylight changed to moonlight, a train travelling on a track would crash, or an earthquake would be shown in before, one of the first uses of dioramas in a museum was in Stockholm, Sweden, where the Biological Museum opened in 1893. It had several dioramas, over three floors and they were also implemented by the National Museum Grigore Antipa from Bucharest Romania and constituted a source of inspiration for many important museums in the world. Miniature dioramas are typically smaller, and use scale models. Such a scale model-based diorama is used, for example, in Chicagos Museum of Science and this diorama employs a common model railroading scale of 1,87. Hobbyist dioramas often use such as 1,35 or 1,48. An early, and exceptionally large example was created between 1830 and 1838 by a British Army officer, william Siborne, and represents the Battle of Waterloo at about 7.45 pm, on 18 June,1815. The diorama measures 8.33 by 6 metres and used around 70,000 model soldiers in its construction and it is now part of the collection of the National Army Museum in London. Sheperd Paine, a prominent hobbyist, popularized the modern miniature diorama beginning in the 1970s, modern museum dioramas may be seen in most major natural history museums. Often the distant painted background or sky will be painted upon a continuous curved surface so that the viewer is not distracted by corners, seams, all of these techniques are means of presenting a realistic view of a large scene in a compact space. A photograph or single-eye view of such a diorama can be especially convincing since in case there is no distraction by the binocular perception of depth. Carl Akeley, a naturalist, sculptor, and taxidermist, is credited with creating the first ever habitat diorama in the year 1889, akeleys diorama featured taxidermied beavers in a three-dimensional habitat with a realistic, painted background. With the support of curator Frank M. Chapman, Akeley designed the popular habitat dioramas featured at the American Museum of Natural History, combining art with science, these exhibitions were intended to educate the public about the growing need for habitat conservation. The modern AMNH Exhibitions Lab is charged with the creation of all dioramas, miniature dioramas may be used to represent scenes from historic events. A typical example of type are the dioramas to be seen at Norways Resistance Museum in Oslo

9.
Sandstone
–
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earths crust, like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, quartz-bearing sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure, usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. They are formed from cemented grains that may either be fragments of a rock or be mono-minerallic crystals. The cements binding these grains together are typically calcite, clays, grain sizes in sands are defined within the range of 0.0625 mm to 2 mm. The formation of sandstone involves two principal stages, first, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation, either from water or from air. Typically, sedimentation occurs by the settling out from suspension. The most common cementing materials are silica and calcium carbonate, which are derived either from dissolution or from alteration of the sand after it was buried. Colours will usually be tan or yellow, a predominant additional colourant in the southwestern United States is iron oxide, which imparts reddish tints ranging from pink to dark red, with additional manganese imparting a purplish hue. Red sandstones are seen in the Southwest and West of Britain, as well as central Europe. The regularity of the latter favours use as a source for masonry, either as a building material or as a facing stone. These physical properties allow the grains to survive multiple recycling events. Quartz grains evolve from rock, which are felsic in origin. Feldspathic framework grains are commonly the second most abundant mineral in sandstones, Feldspar can be divided into two smaller subdivisions, alkali feldspars and plagioclase feldspars. The different types of feldspar can be distinguished under a petrographic microscope, below is a description of the different types of feldspar. Alkali feldspar is a group of minerals in which the composition of the mineral can range from KAlSi3O8 to NaAlSi3O8. Plagioclase feldspar is a group of solid solution minerals that range in composition from NaAlSi3O8 to CaAl2Si2O8. Lithic framework grains are pieces of ancient source rock that have yet to weather away to individual mineral grains, accessory minerals are all other mineral grains in a sandstone, commonly these minerals make up just a small percentage of the grains in a sandstone

10.
Asclepias
–
Asclepias L. the milkweeds, is an American genus of herbaceous perennial, dicotyledonous plants that contains over 140 known species. It previously belonged to the family Asclepiadaceae, but this is now classified as the subfamily Asclepiadoideae of the dogbane family Apocynaceae, milkweed is named for its milky sap, which consists of a latex containing alkaloids and several other complex compounds including cardenolides. Some species are known to be toxic, carl Linnaeus named the genus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. Asclepias species produce some of the most complex flowers in the plant kingdom, five petals reflex backwards revealing a gynostegium surrounded by a five-membered corona. The corona is composed of a five paired hood and horn structure with the acting as a sheath for the inner horn. Glands holding pollinia are found between the hoods, the size, shape and color of the horns and hoods are often important identifying characteristics for species in the genus Asclepias. Pollination in this genus is accomplished in an unusual manner, pollen is grouped into complex structures called pollinia, rather than being individual grains or tetrads, as is typical for most plants. The feet or mouthparts of flower-visiting insects such as bees, wasps and butterflies, pollination is effected by the reverse procedure, in which one of the pollinia becomes trapped within the anther slit. Asclepias species produce their seeds in follicles, the seeds, which are arranged in overlapping rows, bear a cluster of white, silky, filament-like hairs known as the coma. The follicles ripen and split open, and the seeds, each carried by its coma, are blown by the wind, milkweeds use three primary defenses to limit damage caused by caterpillars, hairs on the leaves, cardenolide toxins, and latex fluids. The milkweed filaments from the coma are hollow and coated with wax, during World War II, over 5,000 t of milkweed floss were collected in the United States as a substitute for kapok. As of 2007, milkweed is grown commercially as a filling for pillows. Milkweed fibers are used to clean up oil spills, in the past, the high dextrose content of the nectar led to milkweeds use as a source of sweetener for Native Americans and voyageurs. The bast fibers of some species can be used for cordage, milkweed latex contains about 1 to 2% latex, and was attempted as a source of natural rubber by both Germany and the United States during World War II. No record has been found of large-scale success, silk of America is a strand of common milkweed gathered mainly in the valley of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada. The silk is used to manufacture thermal insulation, acoustic insulation, milkweed is beneficial to nearby plants, repelling some pests, especially wireworms. Milkweed also contains cardiac glycoside poisons that inhibit animal cells from maintaining a proper K+, as a result, many natives of South America and Africa used arrows poisoned with these glycosides to fight and hunt more effectively. Milkweed is toxic and may cause death when animals consume 10% of their weight in any part of the plant